Diary of young Girl Anne Frank: Secrets of Second World War

Who Was Anne Frank

Anne Frank was a German-Jewish teenager. She was Born Annelies Marie Frank on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt, Germany, to Otto and Edith Frank. He was forced to go into hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, Holland during the Holocaust.

Anne Frank’s father Otto Frank had been a lieutenant in the German army in World War I and then became a businessman. Anne's sister, Margot, was three years older.

Shortly after receiving a diary for her 13th birthday,Anne Frank started recording entries on June 14, 1942, and she continued writing down her impressions while confined with her family and four other fugitives as they hid behind a bookcase in a concealed attic space in her father's office building.

Fleeing Nazi persecution of Jews, the family moved to Amsterdam and later went into hiding for two years. During this time, Frank wrote about her experiences and wishes. In 1945 the family was found and sent to concentration camps, where Frank died at the age of 15.

She was designated to be erased from the living, to leave no grave, no sign, and no physical trace of any kind. Her fault—her crime—was having been born a Jew, and as such she was classified among those who had no right to exist: not as a subject people, not as an inferior breed, not even as usable slaves.

One month before liberation, not yet sixteen, she died of typhus fever, an acute infectious disease carried by lice. The precise date of her death has never been determined.

The house ,where Anne Frank with her family was caged in 

She and her sister, Margot, were among three thousand six hundred and fifty-nine women transported by cattle car from Auschwitz to the merciless conditions of Bergen-Belsen, a barren tract of mud.

The “Diary” Anne Frank received for her 13th birthday was actually an autograph book.

It was first published in Germany and France in 1950, and after being rejected by several publishers, was first published in the United Kingdom in 1952. The first American edition, published in 1952 under the title Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, was positively reviewed.

The book was successful in France, Germany, and the United States, but in the United Kingdom it failed to attract an audience and by 1953 was out of print. 

It’s most noteworthy success was in Japan, where it received critical acclaim and sold more than 100,000 copies in its first edition. In Japan, Anne Frank quickly was identified as an important cultural figure, who represented the destruction of youth during the war.

Its immense popularity inspired award-winning stage and movie versions.

Otto Frank in the attic of Anne Frank House,Amsterdam,1960.Arnold Newman Collection

The young girl's entries were made in the form of letters to several imaginary friends and she also employed pseudonyms to conceal the identities of her fellow fugitives and accomplices. Like many other normal teenagers. 

Anne agonized over her conflicted feelings about her family and a possible romantic interest, as well as her evolving thoughts about life. But her extraordinary depth and fine literary ability, combined with her optimism in the face of such adversity made her account a literary and historical treasure.

"It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals," she wrote shortly before her arrest. Anne was a lively and talented girl, expressing her observations, feelings, self-reflections, fears, hopes and dreams in her diary. Her words resonate with people all around the world."

Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart… I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too.

I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.

Anne would end up spending two years and one month closeted in the hideaway, before the group was betrayed and sent off to concentration camps. Of the eight persons in hiding in the attic, only her father would survive. Anne succumbed to typhus in Belsen-Belsen in March 1945. She was just fifteen.

A family friend later retrieved the diary from the attic and presented it to Anne's father after the war. Upon reading it, Otto Frank persevered to get it published.

  

To date the book has sold more than 30 million copies in 67 languages. The original manuscript was bequeathed to the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation.

The End

Note—This blog has been written with help of different materials, sources, articles and photos available on net with thanks.